Yesterday, Ethics Alarms discussed the deceptive editing of a Mitt Romney campaign video to make him look out of touch “with how real people live,” the attack line used so successful against President George H.W. Bush by Bill Clinton, after Bush had expressed amazement at grocery store price scanners. MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell cackled over the clip, which conveniently left out the point Romney was making. Naturally, other liberal flacks in the media picked up the theme, and cited the falsely edited segment.

Mitchell subsequently responded to complaints regarding the blatantly biased and unethical edit, and you can watch her response below: a huge shrug, and a dishonest “we didn’t have the chance” to play the whole thing (and instead decided to laugh at the Republican candidate for looking like a fool because we intentionally made him look like a fool.

This is so arrogant, unprofessional and shameless that it cramps the brain. Obviously Mitchell is confident that MSNBC’s mouth-foaming, GOP-hating audience doesn’t give a damn about deceptive journalism as long as it is aimed at “the bad guys,”so she sees no need to apologize, or act as if the network’s execrable journalistic ethics is anything to get worked up over. Obviously her bosses at NBC have no intention of admonishing anyone for this blatant breach of fairness. Blogger Greg Kendra explains the state of affairs well by writing of Mitchell:

“She failed to acknowledge what the “criticism” entailed; she neglected to point out how the editing misrepresented the event being covered; and she offered nothing resembling an apology or an admission of responsibility for something that was, as a matter of fact, irresponsible.

“I’m tired. Truly. I’ve grown weary of trying to defend the indefensible and explain the inexplicable. For years, people have stomped their feet and pounded their fists and snorted “Liberal media bias!” and I’ve always tut-tutted and shooshed them and said, “No, no. Calm down. They meant well. It was just a misunderstanding. A mistake. These things happen.” I spent over 25 years working in the oft-reviled Mainstream Media and I saw up close and personal how the sausage was made. I knew the people who wielded the knives and wore the aprons, and could vouch (most of the time, anyway) for their good intentions.

“But now? Forget it. I’m done. You deserve what they’re saying about you. It’s earned. You have worked long and hard to merit the suspicion, acrimony, mistrust and revulsion that the media-buying public increasingly heaps upon you. You have successfully eroded any confidence, dispelled any trust, and driven your audience into the arms of the Internet and the blogosphere, where biases are affirmed and like-minded people can tell each other what they hold to be true, since nobody believes in objective reality any more. You have done a superlative job of diminishing what was once a great profession and undermining one of the vital underpinnings of democracy, a free press. Good job.

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.